Stay the Course

President Bush and his aides are annoyed that people keep misinterpreting his Iraq policy as“stay the course.” A complete distortion, they say.“That is not a stay-the-course policy,” White House press secretary Tony Snow declared yesterday.

Where would anyone have gotten that idea? Well, maybe from Bush.

“We will stay the course. We will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed,” he said in Salt Lake City in August.

“We will win in Iraq so long as we stay the course,” he said in Milwaukee in July.

“I saw people wondering whether the United States would have the nerve to stay the course and help them succeed,” he said after returning from Baghdad in June.